Bac Ha

We arrived in Hanoi and stayed in a hotel in the beautiful old quarter, that had another hotel going up next door. (Nearly everywhere we stayed in Vietnam had a new hotel going up next door – a measure of the booming tourist trade, which is presumably a good thing for the locals, but not so peaceful for us!) Everyone went to the fascinating and brilliantly curated Museum of Ethnology – everyone except me, that is. I was back at the hotel being sick, after foolishly having taken painkillers on an empty stomach.
In the evening, we left most of our luggage at the hotel and took the overnight train to Lo Cai. (Thankfully I had recovered by then.) This northern-most town is just across the river from China – you can wave to it from there! Locals travel across the bridge every day to buy up cheap and nasty Chinese goods for resale in Vietnam. There we met our regional guide and had breakfast in a cafe.

Then we piled into a minibus and drove up into the mountains to Bac Ha, where the Sunday market was in full swing. Thousands of tribal Hmong people walk into town from their mountain villages to sell their wares and buy supplies, eat weird/scary-looking stuff (I'm not even going there) and drink too much of the impressively strong local corn liquor.

The Hmong women all dress in traditional garb: bright, multicoloured, beaded and cross-stitch embroidered skirts, tops, scarves and wraps. It's one of those aesthetics where too much embellishment is barely enough. The effect is utterly delightful. I bought one of the skirts, and several pieces of cross-stitch embroidery, as well as some beautiful and intricate batik printed cotton.
Later, we went on a short hike nearby where we visited an elderly man whose nickname we were told was Uncle Ho (we assumed from this that he had once been in the Viet Cong). Full of charm and vitality, he pressed corn liquor on us (no was simply not taken for an answer in his house), played a local instrument made of bamboo, sang and danced. It was very much an interactive experience: we were encouraged to play and dance too, to amusing effect.
We tottered back to the hotel, feeling the effects of the corn wine. On the way we encountered some young Flower Hmong girls who were cross-stitching as they walked.